European Union
officials aren’t just determined to keep mum during the U.K.’s
referendum campaign: They are refusing to move key legislation out of
fear that they might fuel support for a Brexit.

Officials and
politicians said several EU initiatives have been put on ice or
pushed off the agenda in an effort to avoid stirring up controversy
before the June 23 referendum in Britain.

Among them are: a
mid-term review of the bloc’s seven-year budget, which could result
in a fight over a proposal to increase EU spending by €20 billion;
the launch of the Commission’s labor mobility package, which would
set out new guidelines for the freedom of movement of workers; and
the EU’s accession to the European Convention on Human Rights,
which the U.K. government strongly opposes, claiming it would
infringe on the sovereignty of the British legal system.

Even as they
expressed relief this week that the U.K. and other EU countries
reached a deal on reforms that British Prime Minister David Cameron
said he needed in order to win the referendum vote, politicians in
Brussels have resigned themselves to the fact that not much
legislation will go through until after the British question is dealt
with.

“These proposals
can be discussed after June without creating too many difficulties”
— French official.

“There’s a kind
of a deflection of attention to some issues,” said Mercedes Bresso,
an Italian MEP from the Socialists and Democrats group, adding that
the referendum was causing a “delay in some debates,” including
on the EU’s budget. “Now is not the moment to create more
problems.”

A French official
called the decision to hold back on some legislative measures a
“reasonable” one.

“These proposals
can be discussed after June without creating too many difficulties,”
the official said. “In fact, it would be more problematic if we had
to negotiate under the pressure of the U.K.. So, in a way, it
protects the other member states as well.”

The slow lane

The Commission has
until the end of 2016 to submit a review of its seven-year budget,
known as the multi-annual financial framework. The European
Parliament’s budgetary committee isn’t expecting to see the
proposal for revisions until the autumn, to avoid a pre-referendum
outcry from Euroskeptics over any proposal to give the EU more money.

“Everyone knows
this is not a good time because of the problems with the U.K.,”
said Pedro López de Pablo, spokesman for the center-right European
People’s Party group in the Parliament. “The Commission has been
very cautious on all of these things. Nowadays we’re in a public
opinion environment that everyone attacks the European Union.”

“They don’t want
to open the pandora’s box before the referendum” — Polish MEP
Jan Olbrycht.

But some MEPs on the
budgets committee say the delay will make their oversight role more
difficult by not giving them enough time to consider proposed
revisions submitted by the Commission. They say they need to see the
proposal now — and not in September after the referendum dust has
settled and the summer break is over.

“They don’t want
to open the pandora’s box before the referendum,” said Polish MEP
Jan Olbrycht, a member of the budgets committee. “We want the
Commission to make their proposals as soon as possible. We need a
serious debate about the review and the revision. There’s no time
to waste.”

When it does come,
that debate promises to be controversial. Siegfried Mureșan, vice
chairman of the budgets committee, said MEPs are bracing for a “far
reaching revision” of the remaining budget target to manage the
migration crisis, which was not foreseen in 2013 when the current
budget was planned.

“We’re hoping
for more flexibility and money in justice and home affairs, which
includes security at the borders and the migration fund,” said
Mureșan.

“I’m hoping for
more money in areas related to foreign policy, to improve the
conditions on the ground of the origin of the refugees.”

EU budget fights can
be counted on to stir up anti-Brussels sentiment in Britain. Cameron
fought hard in 2013 to win a 3 percent cut in the EU budget — which
he then touted back in the U.K. as a political victory against
Brussels.

As part of this
review, EU officials say the Commission and Parliament plan to ask
for a €20 billion increase to the budget over its remaining three
years, but they are not slated to make that announcement until July,
after the referendum. Also in July, the budgets committee will
present a report to the Commission on its needs. The Commission will
then offer a counterproposal in the autumn.

Matching Cameron’s
deal

A proposal for new
EU guidelines on labor rules across the Union was supposed to have
been introduced by Employment Commissioner Marianne Thyssen in
December 2015, but was postponed while EU leaders debated measures on
welfare benefits as part of the U.K. deal.

According to a
Commission spokesperson, certain elements of the so-called labor
mobility package, which includes rules on social security benefits,
will still be kept on hold until after the referendum. As for other
measures in the package not related to the U.K. deal, the
spokesperson said the Commission “reserves its possibility to come
forward with such proposals as soon as they are ready.”

But on this measure,
too, EU parliamentarians are complaining about the implications of
the delay, even as they acknowledge the reasoning behind it.

“I understand
timing in politics is key, even though I’m eagerly waiting for the
labor mobility package because there hasn’t been much legislative
work,” said Danish MEP Ulla Tørnæs, from the ALDE group.

Measures in the
package related to social security will have to be brought into line
with the terms of the U.K. deal reached last week, which include new
restrictions on payments to EU migrants and their children living
abroad.

On some measures,
the EU is under pressure to speed up, rather than slow down. Cameron
made a focus on competitiveness one of his key renegotiation demands,
and the Commission has in recent months already worked to accommodate
it with proposals to cut regulatory red tape and improve rules for
capital markets.

That effort is now
continuing. Sources said the U.K.’s ambassador to the EU, Ivan
Rogers, has been putting pressure on leaders to finish trade deals
like the EU-Canada trade agreement and to make progress on the
EU-U.S. Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership before the
referendum — to show that the EU works.

“Part of their ask
is that you use the trade power that you’ve been given,” said
Emma McClarkin, a Conservative MEP on the international trade
committee. “David Cameron is for making sure we deliver Canada as
quickly as possible. It’s been a bit slow.”

Off the agenda
altogether

Another topic that’s
been put on the back burner is the EU’s accession to the European
Convention of Human Rights, an international treaty on human rights
that includes several European countries but not the EU as a whole.

The process of
signing up to the Convention has been contentious in the U.K., where
conservatives say its European Court of Human Rights would infringe
on the sovereignty of the British legal system.

The court, which
rules on complaints from individuals or countries alleging violations
of the treaty, has previously held against the U.K. on such questions
as banning voting rights for prisoners and the ability to deport
non-EU criminals with family members living in Britain.

Cameron has pledged
to make sure the U.K. is exempt from the court’s rulings, so
re-examining the issue has been pushed off the EU agenda for now. A
Commission spokesperson said the EU was currently in a “period of
reflection” over how to proceed with the accession.

But some in the
Parliament’s committee on human rights are eager to see the issue
debated.

“The agreement has
to be negotiated again,” said Cristian Preda, a Romanian MEP on the
committee. “The accession of the EU to the Convention was seen from
the very beginning as a very long process.”